Live blogging session #3: How to define problems and ask questions to engage meaningfully with citizens

SESSION #3 THEME: If Only We Knew…how to define problems and ask questions to engage meaningfully with citizens

• CHANGE AGENT: David Hume, Executive Director of Citizen Engagement, Province of British Columbia, Canada
• FACILITATORS: Richard Matasar, Vice President for University Enterprise Initiatives, New York University

The following is a liveblog of one of six sessions at The GovLab Experiment: Making Engagement Work. It will be updated as the sessions progress from 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM. For the full schedule, please see: http://thegovlab.org/events/making-engagement-work/. For more, read the session description at the bottom of the post.
(Live blog updates provided by N.Y.U. student Andrew Young)
—
 3:45 PM: Empathy is a powerful policy tool. Providing government officials with a story for why they should take a certain action can be more effective than relying exclusively on logic, surveys or data (which is not to say that those elements aren’t effective and valuable in their own ways).
3:36 PM: Participant suggests that part of the challenge with moving beyond traditional problem-solving channels lies in generational differences. In general, young people may be much more willing to look to the margins for solutions than members of the older generation, who can be more reluctant to move past conventional methods and voices.
3:02 PM: When defining problems to be directed to the public, developing a concrete plan for defining the “who,” the “what” and the “how” are critical:

2:52 PM: Could we implement a three-part pilot program where agenda-setting is driven by institutional insiders, scientific and/or industry experts, and the crowd, respectively? A small percentage of the GDP could be allocated to funding the program with the most demonstrated effectiveness.
2:15 PM: It’s important to remember that the elite think in terms of systems, and a very high percentage of the public at large doesn’t think that way, nor do they want to. Institutions need to ask questions with the public’s way of thinking in mind, not the way decision-makers within those institutions traditionally work toward solutions. 
2:08 PM: Group is discussing an innovative three-part process for shaping a policy agenda from citizen engagement:

1:42 PM: Template for how to formulate questions, revised:
The right questions generate ideas, solutions and legitimacy

1. Define the boundaries of framing (the system)
2. Define the terms
3. Be unambiguous in steps 1 and 2 – frame the problem with as little language as possible
4. Discover the objective (more than one way to do this: top-down, bottom-up, etc.)
5. Define the constraints
6. Facilitate / Democratize Access: engagement needs to work across multiple platforms and match the access capabilities of the core constituencies.
7. Rewards and recognition systems, including trust verification systems that show institutions are listening
8. Create measurable outcomes

12:05 PM: A first draft of a template for formulating questions

11:54 PM: Iteration sounds great, but the hierarchical culture of government fosters a top-down system of problem-solving where employees own their proposed problems and solutions, and the modern media environment makes trial-and-error difficult.
Each side of the aisle and segment of the constituency has doubts regarding the ability of government to actually solve their problems. Part of problem-definition lies in assuring the public that citizens’ ideas will actually be acted upon, and government really will work toward meaningful solutions.
11:43 AM: Citizen engagement projects that limit the crowd to only those in the host country are misguided. Good ideas travel, but it’s important to accelerate that travel. Why ignore a person’s good idea, particularly if they’re speaking from experience, just because they live in a different country?
11:36 AM: Maybe directing questions to the entire crowd isn’t always the best way to get meaningful answers. Can institutions develop relatively permanent citizen consulting communities? How could those communities be built? Self-selection? Expertise?
11:24 AM: Sometimes it’s hard to remain optimistic about government’s ability to solve wicked problems, no matter the level of citizen involvement. Provocative question: should it even be up to government to define problems and ask questions with an eye toward solving such huge, complex problems? If not, who should take responsibility?
11:18 AM: Crowdsourcing ideas is very different from eliciting public deliberation on big problems. How can institutions recognize that difference and structure projects accordingly?
11:12 AM: Even if institutions are successful in crafting citizen engagement platforms, big questions still remain regarding things like security, privacy and how government should use personal information to provide services. Can we create citizen engagement platforms that individuals feel comfortable using? Interacting with government shouldn’t require ceding control of your information and identity.
11:07 AM: We need a Rotten Tomatoes for democracy. Citizens should be able to comment on the ideas and opinions of experts. While some things can’t be crowdsourced, that doesn’t mean citizens can’t take part in the process.
11:04 AM: What are the parts of problem definition and citizen engagement that can be benefited by technology? Which can’t? Wise insight that it’s important to know the difference and not try to make technology a universal panacea.
11:01 AM: More interesting questions (I sense a theme). What comes first, the question or the crowd? How much should questions be informed by who they are directed toward?
Also, what about incentives? What’s the payoff for citizen engagement? Is altruism enough? Gamification? Badges? Do these types of decisions need to be made during the problem-definition phase?
10:49 AM: Creating an open process within a closed system is one possibility – i.e, an open innovation project inside of an institutional bureaucracy. Such a system would provide political cover for institutions and their employees while still working toward improved public engagement.

10:42 AM: How can institutions structure calls for citizen engagement without becoming overly prescriptive? A lot of citizen engagement projects around the world have been unsuccessful because they weren’t upfront about the issues in play and the ultimate goals of the project. Institutions need to have an honest, adult conversation with the public and make it clear what type of submissions are being requested, without overly constraining citizen engagement.
10:36 AM: It’s incredibly difficult for government workers to express constraints without dis-incentivizing participation and engagement. When citizens propose problems for government to act on, how can government workers say, “We know, we’re working on that issue already,” or “That problem is actually beyond our scope,” without seeming dismissive?
10:31 AM: Effective question framing is not about creating a conversation between experts alone – it’s about engaging people regarding their experience. Finding the right way to frame questions obviously requires a great deal of research, but that research should not be strictly focused on the issue itself. Institutions need to do some research regarding the crowd to whom the question will be addressed. Finding the optimal way to engage citizens requires some knowledge about those citizens.
 10:27 AM: After the question is asked, the challenge becomes measuring success and integrating those lessons into a system. Even if a question is appropriately framed, the askers work has just begun. Asking questions meaningfully doesn’t exclusively serve utilitarian ends: well-framed questions can help to improve participation, collaboration and transparency. In other words, well-defined questions can not only improve the effectiveness of institutions, but also help to make them more democratic and accessible.
10:22 AM: It’s important to remember that getting meaningful answers isn’t simply a matter of directing a question to a wide variety of people. Getting the right answer to the wrong question accomplishes little, and the order in which questions are asked is directly tied to the relevance of answers.

—–
SESSION DESCRIPTION:  
“While they are often eager to engage with citizens, policy-makers may fail to leverage the “surplus” of the crowd in designing policy solutions to social and economic problems. To develop solutions, we first have to clearly define the problem that needs to be solved. Einstein understood this: “If I had an hour to save the world,” he said, “I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.” But to define a problem, we need facts, examples, experts, ideas and a welter of information that citizens (including those with a high degree of expertise) could provide; if only we knew how to ask them in meaningful ways.
In this session we will bring together experts from different disciplines – including psychiatrists, innovation leaders, cognitive scientists and prosecutors – to consider how to pose questions that can yield the necessary information in ways that it can be used to solve public problems.”